The Best New Online Betting Sites

The first online sportsbook was founded all the way back in 1996. Created only 2 years after the opening of the first online casino, a gambler from Finland placed the inaugural online sports bet on a soccer match between Tottenham Hotspur and Hereford United. The world of gambling would never be the same again.

Since that fateful day over 2 decades ago, access to the internet and participation in online sports betting have both exploded. In fact, in the year 2018, it’s expected that nearly $60 billion will be wagered with online bookmakers. That’s more money than the annual GDP for some smaller nations.

With such a growing and profitable industry available, new online betting sites are springing up all the time. But it can be difficult to discern which are worth your time, and which you should avoid. That’s where we come in!

The Best New Online Betting Sites:

Here is a list of the best new online betting sites out there right now:

This guide was written to help you decide which new betting sites to give your business to. With so many options out there, it’s easy to become overwhelmed with choices, and possibly fall victim to some unethical operations. We are here to not only provide you with the best new betting sites as determined by our team of experts, but also to educate you about how to identify a quality website on your own.

Lastly, we’d like to send you on your way with some decent beginner’s betting tips and things to keep in mind. Once you’re done reading this guide, you should have a solid foundation on which to begin your foray into online betting!

Qualities that the Best New Online Betting Sites Possess

Trustworthy/Safe

The unfortunate truth is that there are numerous online gambling websites out there that operate in unethical ways. Some are outright scams, while others just use shady tactics such as setting unfair odds or withholding payout requests for a variety of unacceptable reasons. Our primary concern is helping our readers avoid these companies.

This is why our experts take vetting our recommended websites exceptionally seriously. Traditionally, we will study a site’s history of dealing with customers and factor in their reputation, but since these are new betting sites, the process is a bit different. We must dig a bit deeper, researching things like the terms and conditions, average payout timelines, and the background of the companies and owners behind the online sportsbooks.

There is no criterion more important than safety and trustworthiness when choosing a new betting site. You are going to have to deposit hard-earned money into an account on any betting website that you pick. This demands a degree of trust and the expectation of honest, reliable service. We take these expectations incredibly seriously, as our readers’ gaming experience is our primary concern.

Responsive and Helpful Customer Service

Excellent customer service is the cornerstone of a positive online gambling experience. When giving an online sportsbook your patronage, you’ll want to ensure that any issue that may occur will be tended to in an empathic and quick manner. If you’ve ever dealt with a corporation that doesn’t prioritize customer service, you’ll understand why. It’s extraordinarily frustrating.

Before giving a new betting site your business, do a little research on their customer service department. There should be a clearly marked area of their website dedicated to dealing with customer problems. Find that area, and make sure there are multiple methods of contact available. You should typically see three options:

Telephone

Email

Instant Messaging

It is worth your time to test each of these contact techniques before signing up. Call the phone number and verify that it is monitored and answered by helpful staff. Next, send an email to the address given. See how long it takes to receive a response; the quicker, the better. Lastly, test out their online live chat function and ensure that it is also monitored and provides instant assistance. This minimal amount of work up front may save you hours of headaches down the road!

Wide Range of Banking Options

It’s also preferable for new online betting sites to provide a wide range of banking options. The most important thing is that any place that you choose to sign up with caters to whichever financial transaction is most convenient for you. But variety can still be an essential trait, depending on where you live.

For example, you may prefer to use your credit card online. This may work for the majority of your transactions, but if you live in the United States, for instance, you will need to find alternative means. The reason being, the USA has passed legislation making it illegal for banking institutions to process transactions with known gambling operations. In this case, you’ll need to bank through Bitcoin or various e-wallets.

Different payment types also take different amounts of time to process. You may not mind depositing with a slower method, but you want your withdrawals fast. This is entirely understandable; it is your money, after all! Here are some of the average processing speeds for some of the many banking types online gamblers utilize:

Bitcoin – Typically instantaneous

e-wallets – Can be instant, but could take up to 3-4 days, depending on the betting site

Credit/Debit Card – 2-5 days

eCheck – 1-3 days

Paper Check – 2-3 weeks or more

Quality Website

We’ve also found that the quality and professionalism of the website itself is paramount. A well-made site can drastically affect customer experience in a few distinct ways. Here are a few of the fundamental reasons having an easy-to-use, quality website is essential:

Graphics Quality – These days, online betting sites offer a wide variety of wagers and features. One favorite type of sports gambling is called “live betting” or “in-game betting.” This is a type of wagering that allows you to place bets while a game is currently being played. Some new betting sites allow for live streaming of the event, and an interactive interface on which to make your picks while enjoying the action. This requires smooth streaming and upscale graphics to create an enjoyable, exciting experience for gamblers.

Website Design – When you aren’t live betting, there are occasions when time is a significant factor for bettors. If you are attempting to get your picks in before the game starts and the odds are taken off the board, you don’t have time for confusion. If a site is difficult to navigate, which leads to an inability to make the bets you want, when you want them, it will drastically lessen your satisfaction.

Professionalism – Again, you’re depositing your own money into an account on these new betting sites. You need to be assured that they are a top-notch, respectable, business. A well-made professional website can provide some of those assurances. You don’t want to be spending time and money with an organization that doesn’t take pride in their presentation or has inadequate attention to detail.

The Best Odds

Long-term, betting on sports is a numbers game. The slightest difference in odds can make all the difference in the world. For this reason, we only want our readers to play on the best new betting sites that are offering the very best odds.

Luckily, this is one of the exceptional advantages that online gambling sites have over their land-based competition. Without the ridiculous overhead required for things like staff, utilities, land taxes, etc., online betting sites can afford to offer you more favorable odds. Since successful sports betting is all about finding the most valuable lines, even a half-point difference can be the difference between winning and losing.

Variety of Wagers

In today’s constantly connected, fast-paced society, attention spans are nearly a thing of the past. While we can’t solve enormous collective changes like that, we can do our best to plan for them. One way to do so is to pick new betting sites with a full range of wagering options to keep you interested and entertained.

Variety is the spice of life, and as such we like to provide our readers with sportsbooks that offer lots of options. The more sports, events, and wagers available, the more creative you can get. This gives you the opportunity to develop a niche specialty that you can exploit for profit.

For example, you may find yourself particularly accurate when betting on first-half totals for NFL games. That won’t do you much good if they’re strictly taking point spread or moneyline bets. The more precise you’re able to narrow your wagers down to, the better. If you aren’t interested in breaking things down this way and prefer more straightforward bets, those are available too.

Worthwhile Bonuses and Rewards Programs

It’s always nice to feel appreciated, and this applies to online sports gambling just as much as anything else. That’s why when searching out the best new online betting sites, we consider the bonuses each company is offering up front, and the programs they provide for loyalty rewards. Nothing makes us feel more wanted than free money!

You’ll notice that almost all betting websites offer some kind of bonus for new customers. These usually come in the form of matching the deposit amount or free-play credits, depending on when the reward is received. Matching money is frequently provided upon the first deposit, while free bet credits are gifted solely for signing up, but before making a deposit.

But be warned, the bonuses that gamblers receive before establishing a history with a given site often come with numerous strings attached. You won’t just be able to sign up and withdraw your free money. Sportsbooks aren’t interested in just giving cash away for nothing! Regardless, the bonuses can be used to practice new betting types or to get comfortable with the site.

The more valuable prizes are given in exchange for customer loyalty. Most new betting sites have some kind of loyalty rewards program. They track the size of the bets you typically make, and how frequently to determine your player’s status with the sportsbook. High rollers and highly-valued customers can be eligible for anything from expensive merchandise, to vacations, and even vehicles.

For the majority of gamblers that wager more conventional quantities, loyalty bonuses can still add up to a significant gain. You may receive cashback on a percentage of your losses, points to trade in at the company store, or entry into various raffles and contests.

Common Sports Wagers

Moneyline Betting

When you place a moneyline bet, you are merely attempting to pick the winner of the contest. Because most sporting events take place between unevenly matched opponents, moneyline odds are used to express which side is favored, which side’s the underdog, and what the potential return is for a winning bet. All of this information is provided by either a positive or negative 3-digit number.

For Example

You may be placing a bet on an upcoming boxing match.

Fighter A is the heavy favorite and offered at -500 odds.

This means that a bettor must stake $500 just to win $100. A winning $500 bet on Fighter A would receive a total payout of $600. That’s $100 in winnings, and the $500 that you staked returned.

On the other side of the equation is the underdog. In this case, Fighter B may be receiving odds that look like +650. This would mean that for every $100 staked, the gambler would win $650. Like the example before, if we were to bet $100 on Fighter B and win, the total return would be $750.

The further from 0 the 3-digit number is, the more heavily they are favored or the underdog. Even odds are -100, meaning you receive $100 for every $100 staked.

Handicap Betting

Let’s say you’d like to pick a winner in an upcoming competition, but you want to avoid the uneven odds that moneyline wagers often provide. Most sports offer some handicap wagering to make things more even. These bets are commonly referred to as “point spreads.”

For Example

The Patriots are playing the lowly Browns at Foxborough. If you were to bet the moneyline, the heavily-favored Pats might be offered at -800 odds, requiring you to risk quite a bit of money for a relatively small return.

The smarter play may be to bet the spread.

In this case, the bookmaker may determine that the Patriots are expected to beat Cleveland by 13 points. They will offer a handicap or spread of somewhere between 12.5 and 13.5 points. If you are looking to bet on New England, you may see them provided for even odds at -13.5. This means that whatever the final score is, you subtract 13.5 from the Pats total. In other words, New England must win by 14 points or more to win the bet.

If they win by less than 14, the bet is actually lost. Conversely, you will see the Browns odds listed as +13.5. At the end of the contest, 13.5 points are added on to their total score to determine the winner. They may lose the actual game, but as long as they keep it close enough to “cover the spread,” the bet still wins.

Futures Bets

Futures bets, like the name suggests, are wagers that are determined in the future. Rather than gambling on a single game or competition, these bets are placed on the outcome of a season. For example, it’s common for sports bettors to place bets on which team will win the championship or make the playoffs before a given season even begins.

Because these bets include large pools of competitors, for instance, every team in Major League Baseball, the odds are usually given as fractions. Fractional odds will look like 3/1 or 9/2. This is read as “three-to-one” or “nine-to-two,” and represents how much a winning bet will earn per dollar staked.

Futures bets can be offered on a number of things. Besides the standard championship bets, you may see bets on individual awards like MVP or the Heisman trophy, or which teams will win their divisions and/or conferences.

Bettors that identify a winning team before the rest of the betting public can make considerable amounts of money from futures bets. Just a few years ago in the English Premier League, Leicester City won the league despite being 5,000 to 1 underdogs entering the season. There were multiple gamblers that actually hit this bet and scored enormous earnings.

Totals Bets

Sometimes you may have a feel for how a contest will play out, though you may be less sure about which side will win. In these instances, totals bets, or over/unders may be for you. These are wagers placed on the total amount of scoring both teams combined will achieve.

For example, let’s say the Houston Rockets are playing against the Golden State Warriors. This contest promises to be a high-scoring affair. We may not be able to decide which team is more likely to win, so instead, we look to bet the total. In this example, we’ll say the bookmaker sets the total (or line) at 275 points.

Once the line is set, we gamble on whether the combined total amount of points scored will go “over” or “under” that amount. If the game ends with a final score of 142 – 140, that game’s total was 282, meaning that it went over.

A common betting strategy for handicappers with a strong feeling about their predictions is to parlay a moneyline or handicap bet with a totals bet. So, you may decide that you feel the Warriors will win, and the total will go over. Parlay wagers combine several bets into a single ticket, increasing the odds as well as the potential payout.

Proposition Bets

Prop bets cover any other kind of wager that doesn’t fit in the types above. These bets can be about absolutely anything and are often both creative and absurd. A hot time of year for proposition bets is before the Super Bowl.

Every year sportsbooks all over the globe offer an extensive list of Super Bowl bets. These wagers range from gambling on the coin toss, to the length of the national anthem, which player will score first, and even the color of Gatorade that’s dumped on the winning coach’s head. The availability of prop bets is limited only by the creativity of the bookmaker.

Beginners Betting Tips

Whether you’re brand new to wagering on sports or just looking for a new online betting site, these helpful tips still apply. It’s important to remember that gambling does possess the potential for problem behaviors that may impact your life. As such, it’s vital to stay disciplined, responsible, and honest with yourself at all times.

Bankroll Management

Bankroll management is a term for planning ahead and organizing the money that you are going to gamble with in order to avoid problems. The first step is to determine the amount of money with which you are going to bet. This must be an amount that you can afford to lose without causing any disruptions to your day-to-day life or financial health.

Once you’ve decided on an amount of money, and how long the money needs to last, you organize even further by creating a staking plan. This will depend on how often you are looking to gamble within the timeframe you set for your bankroll. Depending on the frequency you plan to bet, a staking plan breaks up your bankroll into individual bets.

For example, your bankroll is $500 for the month, and you only want to bet a single contest each week. Your staking plan would be to make four $125 bets. This helps you stay organized with your money so that you don’t blow through your gambling funds too quickly.

Document Your Bets

A helpful tip for improving upon the success rate of your gambling is to keep precise records of your betting habits. This can be done by simply writing each wager down, although using computer spreadsheets will be more helpful down the road. The more detailed your records, the more valuable they will become.

When documenting your bets, include as much information as possible. Record the pick that you made, the odds that you received, whether you won or lost, the thought processes behind your choice, and where you got your advice. Over time, these details will reveal a pattern in your handicapping. Maybe you will learn that a particular thought process tends to pay off often, or that a specific pundit commonly leads you astray.

Becoming a winning sports bettor requires more effort than blindly picking games. It takes constant refinement, attention to detail, and analysis of your results. The more work you put in, the more money you’ll take out!

Find Positive Value

This may come as a surprise, but the best sports handicappers don’t concern themselves with picking winners. In fact, merely trying to figure out which team will win and placing your bets accordingly is a surefire way to lose long term. Instead, you are trying to find positive value in the odds that the bookmakers offer.

The odds that are set for a given contest carry with them an implied probability. So, a bet with -100 odds means that each side has a 50% chance of winning since the return is $100 won for every $100 staked. Those would be the expected odds on a wager on a coin toss, for example. But what if the sportsbook offered +200 odds for heads, and -400 odds for tails?

In this situation, the bookmaker has made “heads” an underdog bet, despite both results having an even chance of occurring. In this situation, you’d have to bet on heads, no matter how strongly you anticipated the next toss coming up “tails.” Anytime the actual probability of an event is higher than the implied probability based on the odds, it’s a positive-value bet.

Shop for the Best Odds

There’s no rule that says you can only sign up with one new betting site. You can, and should, consider signing up with 2 or more so that you can shop for the best odds for each game or event.

For the most part, online sports betting sites will set similar odds as each other on each contest. But there are still instances when there will be slight deviations. No matter how narrow the difference, it’s always worth your time to seek out the most advantageous odds that you can find.

The professional odds makers that work for sportsbooks are incredibly accurate with their predictions. Bets commonly come down to the last play of the game. Even a half-point difference will often be the difference between winning and losing. Additionally, the payouts will be ever-so-slightly better, if you pick the most valuable bets. It may be a negligible amount extra for a single pot, but over the course of your gambling career, it can add up to significant sums of money!

Research

We can’t tell you how much effort to put into your sports gambling. The more casual bettors may not want the hassle of doing extensive research and data collection. Maybe they just want to place their bets as a way to make watching sports more exciting.

But for the participants that want to win, research is critical. The best handicappers are always looking for an edge by crunching numbers and analyzing data.

Note

The more effort you put into research, the more accurate your predictions will be. And if your predictions are reliable, spotting bets with positive value will be much easier.

Researching can include all sorts of activities. You can study advanced statistics and build sophisticated models to help you generate simulated results from which you form your decisions. Other people will only watch the pundits on television or read about sports online. Whatever you choose to do, just remember that there’s a definite correlation between research and winning.

Refine Your Data

Once you’ve grown accustomed to collecting data, the next step in becoming a winning sports bettor is always identifying which information was helpful, and which was useless. Building accurate models requires constant refinement of your data. For example, you may find that teams’ home and away records should be prioritized above their travel distances, so you adjust your approach going forward accordingly.

Constant refinement is how you learn from your mistakes. Let’s say part of your data set was a prediction from ESPN’s Steven A. Smith. After a few weeks, you’ll probably learn that he’s literally almost always wrong. The next move to make would be to remove his prediction from your data set, or at least change your approach to his information. Maybe you’ll find more value betting against him from now on instead.

Never Chase Losses

If there’s only one betting tip that you take from this guide, it should be this one.

Important

Chasing your losses is when you hit a losing streak, and rather than stick to your staking plan, you attempt to change your fortunes by making larger and more frequent bets to get back on track. Often, gamblers that are chasing their losses will feel “due” for a big win, and thus make more massive bets to recoup the money lost on a recent string of failures.

Avoid the temptation of ever feeling due for a win. Gambling doesn’t work that way; each bet is independent of every other. We all inevitably run into rough patches in which we are unlucky. When this happens, it’s more important than ever to stick to the staking plan and continue managing your bankroll with discipline.

By making the right decisions during a losing streak, you can protect yourself from devastating losses and financial instability. One of the most common ways gamblers dig themselves into a hole is by chasing their losses. If your luck doesn’t turn around as planned, you can lose significant amounts of money quickly, which leads to horrific consequences. Never ever chase your losses!!!

To Wrap Things Up

If you’re looking for the best new online betting sites, you’ve come to the right place. The online sports betting industry is a vast sea of legitimate options, scams, and well-intentioned but poorly-run gambling operations. With so many sites to choose from, it can be overwhelming for novice bettors.

Rather than trouble yourself with hours of research and studying websites, which could be better spent making your picks, let our experts show you the way. Our team is continuously vetting and reviewing new betting sites in an effort to only pass along the best recommendations to our readers. This allows you to rest easy, knowing you’ll be dealing with the safest, highest-quality online sportsbooks on the internet.

So, check out our list of recommendations and find the betting site that’s best for you. Now that you’ve read this guide, you should have a clear understanding of what to expect from the best new betting sites and a sturdy foundation of knowledge from which to make your picks from. Whether you choose to dive into the research and put immense effort into your picks to win big, or you merely want to make watching the game more exciting, the world of online sports betting has something for everyone.